All at once he jumped to his feet and tore down the stairs. There was a loud roar in the parking lot. A lone motorcycle wheeled out the driveway and ripped off down the hill. The ear-shattering racket hung in the breathless air for many minutes before fading into the stillness of the night.
XXI
It was 8:00 the following Wednesday evening. A half-moon lay low on the western horizon in the receding aura of the long-set sun. Dry leaves were scraping lifelessly along the sidewalks and lanes and were piling up in the eddies of trees, gutters, and even the old oak bench on which Stephan Pearson was nervously fidgeting.
Where on earth could she be? he asked himself anxiously. She’s looked so unbearably pretty these last few days. Makes you fall all apart on the inside.
This led him into a series of vague and inconclusive musings about his weird life these past weeks. But as the darkness deepened around him, it also deepened within him. This was the one time each day when he could count on seeing her. She never failed to emerge from the women’s dorm, stroll past him to the music hall, and mount the stairs to her organ perch high above him. It hadn’t taken him long to distinguish the sound of her organ from all the other sounds coming from the building. He had grown to depend on this evening routine for his inner sustenance, and now that for the first time it hadn’t happened, he felt more ravenous than if he had skipped a meal.
Where are you? he moaned inwardly.
As time wore on and she didn’t appear, his worry over her also became disgust with himself. Self-doubt began tormenting him again. This is so stupid, he chided. Whether she comes or doesn’t come, just look at yourself. You’re behaving like a fool. Get up and get out of here!
With that he grabbed his book and fled the bench. Soon, however, he had slowed to a normal walk. He was aching all over and about as crestfallen as he could get. Maybe there was something wrong with her? Maybe she was sick?… No, not likely. He had seen her at supper. But then, he had noticed that she’d eaten only a few mouthfuls before getting up and taking her tray to the rack. She had seemed a bit flustered at that…. Those music students were an odd lot. Perhaps there was a special concert or recital in Minneapolis. He knew the train left shortly after supper. Yes, that was probably it! He felt relieved to hit upon such a logical explanation for her absence.
I hope she’s having a good time up there, he said to himself with resignation.
At that moment he stepped out from under the trees into a flood of light coming from the auditorium. What’s this all about? he wondered, recalling as quickly the announcement in chapel that morning that the Drama Department was staging an English production of Schiller’s Cabale und Liebe that evening.
Sounds like a real thriller, Steve told himself.
Students were now pouring in toward the auditorium from every direction. But the main flow was on the broad sidewalk from the women’s dorm that ran roughly parallel to the little used trail Steve was on. He was glad to be out of the traffic. Near the entrance of the auditorium, however, the trail and the sidewalk converged. Steve was tempted to turn off the trail and walk around the auditorium through the trees to avoid the crowd, but something prevented him. So he continued straight ahead towards the crowd.
He was nearly at the intersection of his trail with the sidewalk when his blood froze. Coming down the walk and destined to converge with him were Tom Mahler and Cecilia Endsrud! The handsome young ex-soldier was walking straight and tall with a broad grin on his face. And at his side, her arm through his arm, radiant and glowing as usual, was Steve’s angel.
Steve’s legs turned to lead weights. He wanted to run away, but his feet kept plodding forward on their collision course. Robotlike he lurched forward. Closer and closer and closer.
“Evening, buddy!” Tom sang out across the well-lit ten feet that separated them. “Heading for the play, too? Cecilia here tells me it’s a real tearjerker. Poisoned lemonade and everything.”
“No, no. Just out for a walk,” Steve squeezed out.
Cecilia was looking at Steve full in his mournful face. A gentle smile played on her lips but it looked to him as though there was a question mark in her soft eyes. There was nothing condescending about it, just the merest hint that Steve’s sorrow was touching her now as it had touched his Spectre Maiden on that night in his dream. It was almost a look of understanding. It was too much for Steve. It lasted for the briefest instant, and then they were past him.
He dropped his head, turned away, and stepped off into the obscurity of the trees. There’s your quota for life, he moaned. She’s just too much for you.
He couldn’t go back to the dorm. Instead he wandered down into the town and out into the countryside. He paced around in the blackness of the now moonless night. Finally, wearied in body and soul, he returned to the dormitory by another route.
The play lasted rather late into the evening. The women had been issued special passes at the door so that they could get back into the dorm “not later than 11:30 p.m. on pain of forfeiting similar privileges in the future.” By 11:45 half the fellows in the men’s dorm were congregated in their respective lounges discussing, surprisingly enough, the relative merits both of their dates and of the play. Apparently, those men who really cared about their dates had been really shaken up by Schiller’s tearful tale, while most of the girls had sobbed quietly into their handkerchiefs for the better part of the last two acts.
Lute and Ted had decided to forego the play and stay in the dorm. When Steve came absently trudging up the staircase, they were both sitting in the lounge listening intently to Tom’s play-by-play account of his date. Steve slipped past them into his room without greeting them, but he left his door ajar.
“And she sat there next to me, her shoulders quivering and the tears streaming down her cheeks just as unashamed as can be. I was too embarrassed to look at her, but I sure wanted to. I did get a chance to steal a look at her once. She looked at me and I could see she had taken the whole thing into her heart. It was awfully sad, all right…. You can’t imagine how gosh awful pretty some girls are when they have tears in their eyes. I had the strongest urge right there to take her in my arms and tell her that everything would be all right.”
“That’s what I’d have done,” boasted Lute.
“Not with her you wouldn’t have! This little chick has got a built-in something-or-other that draws you in and then holds you at arm’s length even though you want to grab her and squeeze the living daylights out of her.”
“Oh, I see. One of the magic kind, eh? Well, you held her hand at least, didn’t you?”
“Well, ah, as a matter of fact, you fellows just don’t get it. She’s a good girl, a really good girl. But you just wait until Christmas. By then I’ll have her doing cartwheels around my little finger!” Tom swelled up with confidence.
“Listen to him talk!”
“Don’t be too hard on him, Lute. A great big handsome brute like him will just bowl that innocent little farm girl over in no time flat.” Ted enjoyed poking fun at Tom whose muscular frame and classical Nordic features would have impressed even Miss America.
“Now don’t you be too sure about that. He’s not dealing with one of those man-hungry French broads that were running around on the loose after the war. A Minnesota preacher’s daughter is nothing like them.”
“Lute, would you shut up. It might just be that I wouldn’t want to treat Cecilia like one of them.”
“Yeah. And it might just be that you couldn’t.”
“You just listen to me now!” Tom’s wrath was aroused. “It isn’t a matter of ‘can or can’t.’ Some things are a matter of ‘want to or not’!”
“Well, I’ll bet you anything that you can’t take her by Christmas.” Lute was needling Tom along solely for the satisfaction of seeing his friend’s fair face turn scarlet. Nor was he disappointed. He knew exactly which of the ex-soldier’s buttons to push.
“Listen here! I’ll do whatever I decide to do! If I want to, I will. If I don�
��t, nobody can make me.”
“All right. Fair enough,” Lute said coldly. “If you’re still going with her two weeks from now, guaranteed that you’ll want to. And if you are, I’ll bet you can’t take her by January second. See, I’ll even throw New Year’s Eve into the bargain. If you quit going with her before the two weeks are up, the bet’s off.”
“Well, screw you both. I suppose I’ll have to show you.” At midnight there must have been something about the voluptuous prospects of this bet that seemed especially attractive to Tom who had had a generous foretaste of such things in France. “What do you want to make of it?”
“Two to one,” said Lute, feigning the cool detachment of a businessman. You win, I pay you fifty dollars. You lose, you pay me twenty-five.”
“It’s a deal, by golly!”
“Shake.”
“Shake.”
“Well, I’ll be the son of a three-legged centipede,” drawled Ted, marveling at the rapidity of the transaction.
That’s all Steve heard. He wanted to slam the door shut so hard that the dorm would rock. Instead he eased it shut until it clicked. He could not stand still. He paced up and down the room, bumping into his chair and kicking the bunk. He was seeing red. It was all he could handle to hear them kicking his precious Cecilia around like a piece of garbage. Sure! That’s how those guys always talked. They were always needling each other, and bets had come and gone and been forgotten about more times than you could name. But this was about Cecilia and they sounded dead serious! Couldn’t you just see a handsome chunk of a man like Tom following gullible, trusting Cecilia around day and night like an innocent little puppy dog? Those “guileless” features on that sculpted face of his that could look so wounded, so hurt, so maltreated? It would be so easy for her to fall for that. She was so trusting she’d have to be tottering on the brink of disaster before she’d realize she was in danger. It was unthinkable! They were treating his angel as if she were their plaything! Her! Their plaything! And she’d be the last one to catch on.
Steve flung himself down on his bed in a heavy sweat.
But what could a little runt like him do against the bold honest face of a hunk like Tom Mahler? Not a thing came to mind. Steve felt utterly helpless. It is not too hard for us to understand that in his state of mind, the most obvious solution to his dilemma seemed the most remote to him.
He lay there fuming long after Ted had come to bed and long after the lights had been turned off. Everything was tumbling around in his head—his miserable lot, the whole institution of womanhood, the unspeakable gall of anyone conniving to harm his Cecilia, and the overwhelming need he felt to plant himself somehow smack dab in front of her to defend her at any cost. The only thought that didn’t occur to him that night was the startling truth that until a few weeks ago, he would have been utterly incapable of entertaining any such need to defend anybody.
XXII
Two nights later, Stephan Pearson was again sitting on the old bench beneath the nearly naked maples between the music hall and the women’s dormitory. About half an hour earlier Cecilia Endsrud had passed by and, recognizing him from the night of the play, she had greeted him in a cheery voice. This had taken him by surprise. He had managed to return her greeting without betraying any special concern for her. It’s not easy to speak in a normal tone of voice to someone you hold so tenderly in your heart, especially when you know full well that she is according you only a passing thought. I am sharing the light she beams on everybody, Steve had told himself ruefully. But the light I am beaming on her is the only light I have ever beamed on anyone.
Right now the lilting strains of Bach’s “Fantasia and Fugue in C Minor” were floating lightly out of the center window on the fifth story, the only window in the building that was still open in spite of the briskness of the evening air. Steve did not know the name of what she was playing, but it sure performed wonders in his heart! It made him feel so close to her in spirit, and so furious with Tom.
This led him to think about yesterday at supper. Tom had walked up to where Cecilia was sitting and had politely asked whether the seat next to her was reserved for someone. She had blushed a little and just as politely motioned for him to be seated. The rest of the meal for Steve was like watching a tragedy unfold. From two tables away he had observed Tom executing and directing a most successful conversation, guiding it into what appeared to be a bashful repartee in which he was mildly unctuous and persistent and she was innocent and coy, or so it seemed. The oil of experience fairly oozed from Tom’s lips as he bathed Cecilia in discreet compliments backed up by his impressive chivalry. And, clever lad that he was, he had carried her tray for her back to the dirty dishes rack near the kitchen door, pretty well obliging her to wait for and walk out with him. When Steve had left a few minutes later, they were still talking together under the arbor in front of the cafeteria.
The same thing had been reenacted this very night, but this time Tom had joined her in the cafeteria line even before they were seated.
And as if that weren’t enough, there was what had happened at chapel this morning. Steve had mounted the steps of the balcony to his usual unobtrusive perch only to look down and see Tom Mahler escorting Cecilia down the aisle! During the service Steve had watched with growing repulsion Tom’s newfound devotion. His piety reeked with ulterior motives. Steve could almost smell the stench of Tom’s effort to impress Cecilia with his virtuousness. It was all Steve could do to stay to the end of the service.
But the final crushing weight that was bearing down on Steve was Tom’s daily reports to his friends about his encounters with Cecilia. He came close to admitting straight out that everything revolved around the age-old challenge of virtue. He seemed fixated on the glories of the conquest of chastity. Tom was a wily chap, to be sure. As he put it to the guys, for him Cecilia had it all—a thrilling challenge for the moment and a supremely satisfying companion for life. From the way the ex-soldier was talking, Steve had got the idea that his strategy in the short term was to overwhelm Cecilia’s resistance by arousing her passions to a fever pitch, and in the long term to spend the rest of his life savoring her exquisite beauty at his leisure. Steve had listened to all this from inside his room, door ajar, where he sat seething.
But now, the wondrous sounds coming through the window high above him drew Steve back into the present moment. They were being produced by Cecilia’s nimble fingers and agile feet, all of it issuing from her beautiful spirit. He was so glad she always opened her window. She must love fresh air, he mused. That way her music can fly as freely as her soul!
“O my angel! If only you knew what danger you are in!” cried out his inner voice.
At that moment he looked around and saw me approaching him down the lane. A possibility must have suggested itself to him the moment he saw me.
“Evening, Paul! Good evening!” he exclaimed with uncharacteristic energy. “Why don’t you sit down here for a minute? It’s a lovely evening, isn’t it?”
“Sure is,” I returned, taking my place next to him. “I was just bringing this piece of sheet music up to my cousin, but I don’t imagine she’ll be going anywhere for a while.”
“No. Not for another half hour,” Steve assured me.
That little phrase, spoken off guard, told me everything.
“I, ah…,” he began, stammering for words. His lips parted several times and clamped shut. I was beginning to get the picture.
To break the silence, I said, “That’s her playing up there right now.”
“Yes, I know…,” Steve shot back.
This was getting very interesting. I could see that Steve desperately wanted to tell me something but was much too nervous to spit it out. So I suggested we listen to the same “Fantasia and Fugue in C Minor” that she was just beginning to play over again.
“She wants to play this work at Christmas for the people back home in Meadowville. She loves to play Bach, and this is her favorite of all.”
“I can s
ee why,” Steve replied dreamily. He seemed a little more relaxed. “There’s places in it you can’t hear without tears coming to your eyes,” he offered.
So we sat and listened.
To this day when I hear this work well played, a little scenario comes into my head. The lilting and lyrical opening section of the Fantasia suggests to me two young lovers in a small rowboat out on a calm sea one moonlit night. Their world is magically flooded by the cool beams of the low-lying moon whose mystical purity blends with the swelling passions of their love and sanctifies it. Very gradually and ineluctably the heart-pain of their love builds up and up to an almost unbearable climax before subsiding, leaving the two of them trembling expectantly in each other’s arms.
All of sudden, with the outbreak of the Fugue, a vicious squall descends on them. The sea turns into a monster. The moon and the stars disappear. The little rowboat is pitched and tossed around wildly by the breakers. The lovers cling to one another in terror, the sea-spray whipping their faces. For a brief moment, everything calms back down and the moon peeks through the racing clouds. But the squall has saved its worst furies to unleash upon the lovers now. The breakers tower and crash around them again. Four celestial trumpet blasts signal the approaching end as a giant sea bears the quivering craft and its two passengers aloft and dashes them to bits on the rocks below. Then in a powerful restatement of the theme, the squall proclaims its bloody victory. The whole thing is an emotional wringer for me. I never did ask my cousin what it meant to her. But I know it meant something because she played it with such passion and feeling.
Well, Steve and I sat on the bench speechless. Whatever it meant to him, I could see he was deeply moved. And ready to talk.
“Paul,” he began confidently. “You’re a reasonable fellow. And besides, you’re Cecilia’s cousin and she’s partly your responsibility. She’d have good reason to listen to you.”
He looked at me intently, then almost desperately. A look of hopelessness came over him. Turning his face away from me, he muttered to himself, “Oh, crumb. What am I saying?…”
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